STATEMENT

This project is a curatorial programme of four site-specific installations by contemporary artists, in turn taking an ephemeral ownership of a place no longer in use: two telephone booths. Each artist reanimates these ‘black holes’ with a personal vision, creating minute environments or news relations.


Two of the pieces explore the notion of communication inherent to the original place, activating a dialogue using the binary element of the site into two rooms, two people, two sides of a story.
. Davina Drummond has commissioned a conversation between her grandparents whose recording has been split between the two cabins, so that the conversation will be completed in two different places. Is she putting the visitor in the place of a passive recipient or of a subjectivised listener?
. Frederique Decombe prompts the visitors to activate the rooms by following mysterious instructions for use on each door. The piece is an invitation to tell a story that may be heard by someone else in the adjacent room. Would the narratives resonate for one self or will it be for another?
In both installations, the presence of the other listening to an intimate story will oscillate between empathy and voyeurism.

The two other pieces reside in the design of concrete places of a different nature. Intimate or public, these micro environments require a solitaire incubation time.
. Courtney Power chooses the place of a children’s room as a mini theatre to be unveiled. What seems to be at first sight benevolent and entertaining features are a sort of trompe l’oeil exposing existential and political fears. Are the mobiles and their projections a metaphor of the instability of the world, or is it a multifaceted signifier?
. Isabella Lockett’s piece is equally thought provoking. Through the evocation of travel, the train carriage provides a platform within which to invite the passenger to reflect on the images of the countryside through different times as well as different genres and conventions. Will this journey be one of contemplation or reverie, or will it become a springboard for exploring and debating the ideology hidden behind the image?

INFO

Institute of Education
University of London
20 Bedford Way
London WC1H 0AL
(Tube station: Russel Square)

Twin Cabin Project is located at the Students’Union: Core A, level 3, after the staircase on the right hand side
Free admission
Opening hours: from Monday to Friday, from 10:00 to 20:00

Twin Cabin Project is curated by Frederique Decombe
For further information, please contact: twincabinproject@gmail.com or telephone: 020 7221 1794
Your comments are welcome on: http://twincabinproject.blogspot.com

Thanks to the Union and the Institute of Education for their sponsorship
A special thanks to Bassel Akar, Lesley Burgess, Kelvin G. William & Daniel Chalmers

ARTWORKS

19/03 to 17/05
A Tale of Two Shitties
By Courtney Power

A Tale of Two Shitties is a darkly humorous glimpse into how different cultures and societies all share the same existential anxieties. The installation attempts to evoke the space of the nursery, where our childish imaginations allow fear to manifest as bogeymen and faces in the curtains. Are these fears artfully resurrected in media constructions in order to propagate political endgames as in the 'War on Terror'? Or in this tumultuous point in the history of mankind, as hostilities deepen, do we have reason to be afraid? What of the 'expulsive' personalities that control the world order? And finally what do we tell our children?




21/05 to 5/07
A Small Room to Tell
By Frederique Decombe

Nobody comes here with full understanding. It’s difficult to explain its utility. There is nothing inside the room, except a chair and a light bulb for someone to narrate. Telling what one likes, hates, what one hides or cannot hide, what is embarrassing, what is enjoyable; stories from the past, or from the future, the truth or anything else; everything is possible. One says what one wants to say at that very moment. Inside the room, you are alone. But next door, someone might be there listening to you.

Nobody comes here with expectations. It’s difficult to know what would be done of it. There is nothing inside the room, except a chair and a light bulb for someone to listen in silence. Listening to someone telling a story. One might focus on the story and trans-figure the narratives, one might identify with characters of the story. Or one might try to imagine the person who is speaking; picture somebody. But next door, someone might be there talking for you.

This piece is an adaptation of the Japanese novel La Petite Piece Hexagonale by Yoko Ogawa



3/09 to 18/10
A lesson in Love
By Davina Drummond

Why are we not taught how to love?

Formal education never helps us learn how to love - instead we are taught more useful things like algebra. We pick up what we can from quietly observing our parents’ and families and perhaps as young people reading teen magazines, or divorcees reading self help guides.

Young mums, firemen, doctors and even prostitutes are invited to schools give our young people advice, but couples in happy, long term relationships are rarely (if ever) invited to educate young people of their experiences, successes, trials, jubilations and strategies for coping with the most complex of human emotions; love.

In A lesson in Love my grandparents, who have been together nearly fifty years share the ups and downs of their marriage and by doing so give us clues not only how to love but how to make love last – A question we all need help in answering, but rarely get the chance to ask.




22/10 to 6/12
Be a Time Traveller
By Isabella Lockett

Through the window of a railway carriage the passenger is invited to view a range of images of the outside world, from the view of the countryside, depicted literally, satirically and idealistically, to the vision of artists' in the past, of the future. This acknowledges and celebrates the position of advertising and the place of the cartoonist in art.

As a self confessed designer, Isabella has enjoyed the freedom to operate under the auspices of an artist, and wishes to challenge the boundaries between design and art, illustrating how one feeds the other, in equal measure, in an attempt to highlight these pigeon holed categories.

As a farmer's daughter, but also as a confirmed urban dweller, and an ardent fan of public transport, Isabella embraces the vehicle that the railway carriage provides, to explore the town versus country debate.

Pack your bags and climb aboard!

Photographer: Ian Britton Courtesy of FreeFoto.com